To The Lonely Heart
by WickedSong
Summary: While collecting firewood on the way to find the Magic Compass, Snow White comes across someone thought to be long gone. Heavily mentions Gremma/Huntswan.


**To The Lonely Heart,**

**Written by WickedSong.**

**Disclaimer : I do not own OUAT or anything associated with it. Okay, so I was trying to sleep last night and then You Could Be Happy by Snow Patrol came on and I this just jumped into my head. I thought it would end up like the multiple other works that are lying around in my FF folder unfinished and gathering dust, but no, it came together. I don't know how I feel about it. It's weird, but hey, can't help what my muse wants me to write. Hope you enjoy!**

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As Snow collects firewood she notices the man. His back is turned to her, as he walks off into the forest. She looks around, blinks and then adjusts her eyes and finds that he's still there. She had thought that only she, Emma, Aurora, Mulan and, she's accepted this one rather reluctantly, Hook, were left in this world, after Cora's assault on the survivors in the small village. The sight of their ripped hearts will always be engrained in her memory and she takes a moment to compose herself before dropping the firewood and carefully walking behind the stranger.

There's something oddly familiar about the way he walks, something she can't quite place her finger on. She can't think of who it possibly could be; no one springs to mind but she continues walking anyway. Her curiosity has been piqued and that's always been a part of her.

"Hello there!" she calls out when she gathers the courage to do so.

The man appears to have heard her, and he stops for a moment, before hurrying on, this time quickening his pace, until he's almost running from her.

Snow frowns momentarily, wondering what prompted this reaction. "Wait! I-"

The words die in her throat when the man turns to her and she puts a hand over her mouth, the other over her heart. "Y-Y-Y-Cora?!"

He blinks a few times in confusion at her. "Cora?"

"Oh like you don't know!" She runs and tackles him to the ground, drawing her dagger and placing it at his neck – or her neck for she is sure that this is just another one of Cora's tricks; this time to prey on Emma. "What's the plan here, huh Cora? Make Emma believe that somehow Graham – I mean The Huntsman," getting her head back into the use of everyone's actual names is going to take some work, "somehow survived here? Well I'd much rather kill you here than let you hurt my daughter a-"

"Emma? Emma's here?"

His voice sounds so unsure, so small and terrified that she draws the dagger back – but just by an inch. "Don't think I'm falling for this, Cora, I swear I will kill you!"

She's never been an extremely violent person but something about Cora using this man to hurt her daughter, it fills her up with hatred as she remembers the nights spent as Mary Margaret, whom was no more than Emma's friend, but who was called to the Sheriff's office that cold winter's night to pick her up, who took her home, who held her as she cried and cried because somehow Graham's heart had _stopped_.

"I'm not Cora," he tells her, "I-I woke up here, when Regina crushed my-"

Snow draws her dagger straight back as realisation hits her.

"_He had been saying last night that he needed to f-feel something," Emma had shakily explained once the tears had subsided for the time being, "then he said this afternoon that h-he didn't have a h-h-heart." Sobs had once again engulfed her roommate's body and Mary Margaret only held a little tighter, rubbing circles on her back reassuringly and making 'shh' noises to calm her. _

_Once Emma had composed herself she continued, "He went to Henry, thought he was in that book. Then he followed a wolf to the mayor's father's grave a-and he was s-so sure but there was n-nothing, n-nothing!" _

_Emma took a deep breath, as she explained that Graham had then broken up with the mayor or something to that effect and then there was something about Regina punching her but Emma punching back, which Mary Margaret would have secretly been annoyed and happy about, respectively, on any other night. Finally she came to the conclusion of her story and this was where, once again, the tears sprang to her eyes and she hardly made it through. "He collapsed, he fell and his h-heart, his heart stopped!"_

Back in Storybrooke when magic was an impossibility and she was Mary Margaret Blanchard who was convinced that Henry's book was just that – a book full of happy endings, and love, and Prince Charmings, things she was sure she would never have – it had been easier to accept that a perfectly healthy young man would die from such a sudden heart attack.

Now all the pieces fell together in perfect alignment. Regina had had his heart - the heart she had taken after he had…

"In Storybrooke…in the other land, what was my name?"

"Mary Margaret Blanchard. You were a schoolteacher."

She's sure, 100% sure that Cora would not have that knowledge. Storybrooke is the one advantage, the one thing that Cora is not near having…yet. They have to be quick to get the magic compass so she never can.

But before that, Snow stands and sheaths her dagger. The Huntsman – Graham, whatever his name here is now – stands also.

"I'm sorry, I had to make sure…"

"I understand," he says, nodding his head in her direction. "So I see Emma broke the curse."

Snow smiles and nods. She sees the pride written on his face and feels as prideful that her daughter inspired such a feeling. _Her daughter._ Emma thought it was hard to adjust to and while Snow hadn't said as much a part of her feels the same way.

"You don't sound surprised," she replies.

"I knew she would," is his sure answer.

After an awkward pause in their conversation, Snow fills him in on the goings-on after his death in Storybrooke, eventually explaining that Henry was poisoned, much in the same way she was, with the sleeping curse, Emma breaking the curse and the cloud of purple smoke which had invaded the town as quickly as it left.

She goes on to explain about the wraith that wanted to feed on Regina and how they had tried to help her, for Henry's sake, the magic hat leading them into the portal to this part of the Enchanted Forest which had been unaffected by the curse somehow.

"Well, I should let you be off then." He gives a sad smile and his tone is one full of regret.

"So soon? Aren't you going to come see her? She missed-"

"You will find a way back to Storybrooke, Snow," he answers after a thoughtful pause. "I still don't know why I woke up here, but I do know that before I did I saw it all. I saw her trying to wake me up, I saw her crying as I just lay in her arms. I hurt her."

"She doesn't blame you. She never could." Snow takes a step forward but he retreats backwards.

"But I blame myself," he answers. "Besides, there is no life left for me in Storybrooke. For whatever reason I have my heart here, but there, it is crushed. I can't go back. I can't follow you two back there."

Snow's maternal instinct is back and she squares up to the man who spared her life so many years ago. "She deserves to see you."

"She deserves to think I'm dead like she has and has come to accept," he retorts, even while his heart, his new-found heart that he still can't quite believe resides in his chest again, his own once more, pounds and almost beats out of its cage.

"You want to see her, don't you?" Snow ponders aloud.

"It doesn't matter what I want."

His heart is telling him to stop being a fool, or noble, or whatever he is being but he doesn't listen to it. He thinks he would, if the thought of seeing her one more time wouldn't tear him up inside. So much he wants to tell her, and yet words would be insufficient.

"Come with me," Snow says quietly.

"I told you-"

"She doesn't need to see you for you to see her," the princess explains, with a sad smile. She gestures her head. "Come on, this way."

Snow picks up the firewood as she walks until she's at the periphery of the camp. He is behind her.

"Look," she says, as she points towards Emma.

She can hear him take a deep breath in beside her.

Turning, she sees something she had also witnessed the one and only time they had met in this world. He is crying.

And finally she realises. The parts that even Emma hadn't been able to confess but she had somehow suspected were there all along.

"You love her."

She doesn't phrase it as a question because it isn't one. It is fact. It is as real as the fact that he is standing beside her now.

In reply he doesn't nod, he doesn't shake his head, he doesn't do anything, only takes one more deep breath, in and out, in and out. She's still as beautiful as ever, he notes, still has an affinity for those leather jackets, is still _Emma_. He wants nothing more than to reveal himself and talk to her. Just talk.

But in that moment he remembers he can't and it pains him. It also pains him to find that he relives their last kiss in his mind, and he recalls what that almost kiss would have been like had they had their chance. And finally he realises that they never even had a chance to say a goodbye. It just _happened_. He just _died_.

"Please don't tell her you met me," he asks of Snow.

She looks confused and pained at the idea of lying to her daughter. "How can I not?"

"Because I am the last thing she needs to worry about," he tells her curtly. He nods his head to her, and then takes one last look at the scene, and he tries not to cry again. A single tear does make its way down slip from his eye but he blinks the rest away.

He walks away without saying anything to Snow but she turns to him.

"Did you remember?"

"What?"

His back is still turned.

"When you two kissed, did you remember?"

"Yes."

He still isn't facing her.

"Only one thing is that powerful, Gr-Huntsman."

He turns slightly so that is looking at her straight in the eye. She sees the recognition of her statement and its implications churning through his mind. She doesn't need to elaborate for he already knows. "I've decided it's Graham, The Huntsman here. I am both." There's the hint of the smile on his face. "I think she helped me see that anyway."

Snow gives a smile, but there are now tears in her eyes as well. She nods. "I'm glad."

There's a moment of silence as she watches him go back into the woods but he calls her this time. For a split second she thinks he's changed his mind but he simply smiles at her when she turns around. "When you back, can you do something for me?" She nods. "There's a letter, in the office. I locked it in the drawer Emma will tell you she can never open." Snow nods her head; she heard her daughter grumble about that drawer a few times back when she was Mary Margaret. "The key is in my old jacket, in the top pocket. Can you make sure she gets that letter, please?"

She nods. "Of course." She wants to say more but finds that in the words left unsaid she has said in everything. She smiles at him, knowing that whatever that letter contains; it's important that Emma reads it. "I hope we'll see you again Graham, The Huntsman."

He doesn't reply, just smiles, and once more, Snow White and The Huntsman, only he is now newly rechristened Graham as well, go their separate ways.

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**I know Graham coming back to life has been done before but I haven't done it before personally so this was my try at it. Obviously it was bittersweet and you all want to kill me for it but eh, had to be done I'm afraid, otherwise it would've sat in my head and distracted me when I'm meant to be doing uni work. Anyway, please, please, review, and I hope you liked it!**

**WickedSong x**


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